A Challenge is Issued...

October 17, 2008
Cathy, let's try to do something different next week: I want to make my students write comments at our Orkut. They will look at your students' pictures, and then they will write comments on them in Portuguese. Your students and you could have a look at translating sites submitting my students' text into a translation.
Steps for that:
1st: Read the comments;
2nd: Copy my students' comments and put them in a translating site;
3rd: If you are successful translating the texts, see how accurate they are in English: are the messages clear? are they confusing? have you understood at least 80% of the translating messages?

What do you think of my suggestion? Is it possible to do so? You could ask at least one, 2, or three students trying to have the texts translated. If the result is good and you still have some doubts you could email-me asking for this or that meaning of something. If you aren't successful trying to translate the texts, you say that to me and then We will translate them into English as we have done. So, the challenge is issued to you!!! ( I am just kidding!) ---Tyrone


The challenge, no matter if in fun, has been issued and we will go for it!!! Notice that the fear is beginning to lessen...

Lovejoy gets excited...

October 17, 2009

Cathy, I will find a time to make a comment on each of your pictures at Orkut. I will give you my impressions on your students and school. Next week, I will ask my students to write something there too. I think girls and boys will get crazy when they see how beautiful your students are!!!kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk You know how teens are!!!! ---Tyrone

Em 16/10/2008 16:48, Cathy McDonald escreveu:

Tyrone, This is so awesome. Some of the boys are uploading some of their ,music for your students. Hopefully they will attach it tomorrow. I am so excited about this. The kids have learned so much, and so have I. Some have already set up blogs. I will tell them to write in them as well and to let you know their addresses. I feel like a child at Christmas--so many new technology toys that I don't know what to do first. I look at what the students--both mine and yours-- are doing and I love it. It gives teaching a whole new dimension. ---Cathy

Encouragement to try new things... And shared Hope...

OCTOBER 16, 2008

I think that in a collaborative relationship, it is very important to encourage each other to try new things. I was a little resistant at first, but Tyrone was patient and my confidence has grown tremendously as a result.

The exciting part was to see our interest in each others' countries grow, and as a result the excitement spread to the students. Following is an e-mail from Tyrone:

"Good job, Cathy!! I am very proud of you and your students!! I confess to you that I got excited when I saw your pictures at Orkut!!! It seems that we are getting closer and closer...no matter that my students speak Portuguese and are younger than yours!!! My heart beats very excited, happy. For me, it is very important to be in touch with the other part of the diaspora. And now I can see that it is really possible to use technology to make the world a better place to live; to make our sense of humanity more intense; to wait for better days for all of us!!!

And I think we have given to our students - geography, English, history classes in a practical and amusing way; a sense that they belong to the same world...and so on and so forth!!!! Good job!!!

If you want to post texts at Orkut, it is possible. For instance, you can create an album about your school and to comment something about your school in this album; you can create other ones on your city, tourist places to go there; about each of your students and make them write something in such albums. In addition, you can upload some videos you find interesting and put them at Okut: for instance, videos of hip hop; rap; pedagogical ones; etc. So, this is how we can give an Orkut a pedagogical approach...

If you want to post your students' texts you can create a blog, using www.blogger.com as I did and there they can write whatever they want. In case you don't find a site or something in which you can upload their work, you can e-mail them to me and then I can print them and work with them with my students... "

Let the blogs begin...

September 24, 2008

Tyrone, The kids really enjoyed the chat today. I don't know what our problem was with the webcam. Maybe we will get it right next week.
The students not talking to you went into the blogs. It took a while because each one had to set up a blog to make comments to yours. That may be the problem you encountered with Taking It Global. This one works fine.
I hope your students enjoy looking at the comments on each of their blogs. I tried to make sure everyone had a response. I will have more students responding tomorrow. ---Cathy



September 23, 2008

Tyrone, We will call at 10:30 your time. Your blog is wonderful. I did not get your e-mail until afternoon. My laptop crashed and I am afraid that I have lost all my e-mail addresses and downloads. Unfortunately, I did not back up all of my work to a flash drive. I always remind the kids to do it, and then I didn't. Not a good example, I'm afraid. Some students will go on your blog while others talk tomorrow. We look forward to it. ---Cathy


September 22, 2008

Cathy, I am waiting for our Wednesday class together. I would like your students to have a look and make comments in our blog whose address is: http://cecr-escolaparque.blogspot.com There your students will be able to know more about mine and see their photos. Tomorrow I’ll put the data about Tuesday students. Yours could read about Mon, Tue, and Wed students but focusing on the last ones, as they are going to talk to them. Asking my students about their lives, something has called my attention: more than 90% of them don’t live with their parents. They live either with their mother, grandma or their father...It would be a good question to discuss with your students: do they live with their parents? How many of them just live with their mother or father? Violence and drug trafficking are something my students face in their
communities..and I know yours do also. We could think of a manner to make them see that no matter how far they are they have lots of things
in common, besides belonging to the same ethnic group in general...See you on Wednesday. God bless us all!!! ---Tyrone

Enough introductions...

Re: Re: Blog
Tyrone,
Some of my students have already started to blog. I will tell them to do pictures too.

You are right. It is time to start exchanging ideas about our countries and our cultures.

Thanks for working with us this way. I believe the students will learn so much from it. We will be putting information on the bulletin boards in the hall, so other classes will know what we are doing.

Have a good day!
Cathy

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 9:05 PM
Subject: Re: Blog

Hi Cathy!!!
This morning was so good, wasn't it ? My students liked it a lot!!! and me too! Well, I've seen that my ideas have been in line with yours!! In fact, I've been putting my students to write small texts about them for two classes - even today I started my class doing this again as what we had written last weekend was immediately lost after the the computers were turned off! (The tech man has installed a program,as they usually do in lan houses, that deletes everything that was saved before. Today they wrote a text about themselves and as I tried to put some photos of them in the blog, the computer restarted; and again what they had written was lost!! But it doesn't matter! I will suggest to the tech guy deleting such a program; in case it's not possible I will save students data in my e-mail or via pen drive and I'm gonna use such data afterward!

But next week your students will be able to know more about mine!! See you on Monday morning and/or Wednesday morning!!
PS: When classes finished today I felt very happy!! I suggest you to make a brainstorming activity with your students about Brazil, like: what do you know or have heard of Brazil? What comes to your mind when you think about Brazil? Next class we could discuss about their impressions - either negative or positive-, with my students, ok?

Cathy to Tyrone: September 17 am
What fun this morning! I don't think there was any problem because of age differences. You have some "fresh" little guys. :-) Have them go to Taking It Global and set up an account or have them go in under your name and write a comment introducing themselves. Stuff like My name is ..., I like to eat..., my favorite musician, rapper is....
It only needs to be a couple of sentences. Then they have a live audience to comment back.

Problems with SKYPE...

September 11, 2008

I sent e-mail to Tyrone.

"Tyrone, We were very excited. We actually saw you briefly at the very first and we saw the children walking around in your classroom. Then we lost you. I was trying to demonstrate Skype to other teachers Tuesday afternoon and as I tried to open it, it updated and looked different and it wouldn't work right. So I know how frustrating it can be. There is a way to access the sound and increase it -- I'm not sure I can find it again.

Monday morning would be good to try again. I hope to have a good session. Then we will invite the third graders from our school and my seniors will help them to talk with your children. That way the 12th graders will be teaching them how to use the technology.

I like the analogy to "the knife and the cheese." You are right, we will stay with it until it works!

Cathy"